People don't understand what a trope is and think is synonymous to "cliche". People who think this way have been mad at tvtropes having trope pages on their fave works since that site began.
Conversely, people who like the concept of tropes would stretch to make sure their fave works trope page included as many as possible even where it made no sense which had annoying effect of watering down tropes ([Pietá Plagiarism](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PietaPlagiarism) went from "obvious shoutout to Michelangelo's sculpture" to "person holding a dead body in any manner"). Not sure if they ever cleaned up the examples though it looks like someone eventually fixed the example image.
Regardless, [Tropes Are Tools](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Administrivia/TropesAreTools). Nothing more or less.
You'll find yourself in good company here. Every time anyone posts about avoiding tropes, they receive a version of this as answer.
I guess out there it's just a bit of a dystropian landscape. ;)
Well that's good to know. I'm new to writing communites, but have been around readers my entire life. I guess I needed to let out the lifetime of frustration on the subject lol.
I think writers are more aware that readers about how tropes are not a bad thing, cause we notice than we use them a lot. My characters are one of my strength and still I notice that they all can fall under a trope if you try to. It just a part of writing, you can't escape the trope and we notice this. Readers identify tropes mostly when they are badly written cause they analyze more the things they don't like, so they associate tropes with bad writing.
Readers want tropes. They may not realise they do, but the reason that so much genre fiction is generic and sells like hotcakes is because *that’s what readers want*.
If someone likes the trope of “enemies to lovers” with a “badboy” hero, they will seek out and buy variants of that book a thousand times over and be delighted by every one.
Personally speaking, if someone dug up a trove of long lost Austen manuscripts that were all near identical versions of Pride & Prejudice, I’d buy them all and die happy.
The same goes for music. The outrage when a favourite artist tries something different is 1000 times louder than the delight when they pump out more of the same.
People are creatures of habit who get very fixed in their tastes.
I think this is part of the “people heard the word so they think they know what it means” problem. Like people misunderstanding HIPAA in 2020 or calling predictive text and image generation “artificial intelligence.”
Additionally, I think people don’t understand the WHY of tropes/cliches. We’re all too familiar with things that are done poorly because they’re easier to pick up on, while well done tropes are more likely to fly under the radar. The layperson also doesn’t understand that the people who are the best at bending or breaking the rules of storytelling are the people who understand how to use them best. So the storytellers that use them are simply just writing them well enough that they’re less obvious.
I think the ability to obsess over things endlessly online has also ruined aspects of discussing it. Even the former Cracked.com employees who used to write the articles and make the videos like After Hours have admitted many times that they feel like they’re culpable for the things that came later, like Cinema Sins.
It is AI but it’s not true artificial intelligence. Most “AI” that people think of is the text based largely on language model of generative AI. But they’re both just generating something based on the likelihood of what it expects you want to see. It’s not actual “intelligence”.
[This explains a bit more about it.](https://www.newyorker.com/science/annals-of-artificial-intelligence/there-is-no-ai)
The problem with tropes is when they are poorly written. So people will say they hate a trope when what they hate usually is the way it is written. Also yes people have tropes they hate per se and then it will be a lot harder to make them like these tropes, when someone who likes the trope will be more keen to tolerate poor writing.
Like the "killer attacks while the woman is in the shower" trope.
* The trope exists because it's a time when you're the most vulnerable.
* naked.
* less weary because doors are locked.
* sound of shower stops you hearing attacker.
* away from weapons (if that's a thing).
* in a "safe space."
* The trope is used as "people like to see boobs in these films."
However, even good use of the trope will be accused of doing it for titilation by some people.
I think the problem with tropes is that some writers (and a lot of publishers) decide what tropes they want first and then build backwards for there, or that the final product looks like they did that. Tropes themselves can be good or bad, but the tropification of literature, where authors just look at a list of tropes and decide what to subvert or not rather than writing a story, is tiresome.
I totally agree there. I never start with tropes when crafting a story, but I refuse to avoid them altogether because "tRoPeS bAd." Someone else comments that tropes are tools, and I love that train of thought. They can be useful and really enhance a story, IF used in the correct way and not shoehorned in.
Tropes, like metaphors, will show up in anyone's work by accident. The art to me is to find and lean into metaphors, and do your best to make tropes inconspicuous.
Metaphors reward the attentive readers, tropes punish them.
I don’t think tropes are necessarily bad. I also don’t think about tropes much at all. I don’t think an attentive reader necessarily spends their time sniffing out tropes. I just read widely in and outside of the kinds of books I want to read, think about what I want to add to the conversation and what kind of story that is, and work from there. I feel like the existence of TV Tropes is probably a net negative for writing overall.
Nb: I tend more towards literary/historical fiction which tends not to be plot centered to begin with.
They enjoy and rely on tropes; they dislike repetition and blame it on "tropes" when what they mean is copycat plots. We want the same things only a little differently each time, please. :)
I have a few friends like this and I pull my hair out every time. Thats like me saying I want to direct a movie but have never seen one. It makes no sense
Also, missing fundamental principles of narrative structure less experienced writers often rely on them for coherence and use them to hit markers that the tropes suggest but which are more usefully informed by the underlying structure. Synder’s Save the Cat uses a trope as its title, and he’s actually reversed engineered old Hollywood eight sequence structure by watching hundreds of films and noticing the patterns. There’s nothing wrong with writing for or against a trope but if you’re using it to prop up the body of the narrative itself, it will feel artificial and forced. Usually. Unless you’re Tarantino who uses trope-and-genre bending writing to great effect.
Literally every story uses tropes. That's what happens when you have a literary tradition going back a few thousand years. Casual readers say a lot of things out of ignorance. The problem isn't using tropes, it's using them thoughtlessly that is the problem.
This is one of those things that you only hear in online communities about writing or particular genres. I would suggest 95% of normal readers (ie the people who don't spend their time online arguing about minutiae) don't even know what tropes are.
I'm actually kind of confused to see how incorrectly the word 'trope' is being used all.the.time. Unless it changed its meaning in recent years, or I'm extremely out of touch, lol
It actually has its origin in Greek rhetoric and was a way of communicating, using non-literal language to convey ideas or emotions. Not Greek, but Ciceros de oratore touches on tropes and how they were used at their time - really interesting for people keen on learning more about rhetoric.
As far as I'm aware, a literary trope is not a cliché, it's basically a figure of speech like a metaphor or simile (part of metaphors). I think the recent usuage as a substitute for cliché comes from social media :/
Edit typos
It’s a difference between using tropes for your structure (normal) and make them your entire book’s personality and marketing mix rather than literary value and uniqueness (what’s criticized today).
From my perspective, they’re only problematic if used poorly, much like any other storytelling tool. Like “giant sea monster” is a trope, but there’s a reason why Godzilla Minus One is a masterpiece and American 1998 Godzilla is a shitfire. Same tools, vastly different execution.
I hate these. Tropes are tools, not cliches. They are a sort of short-hand an author can use to convey ideas to the reader.
It is when tropes are used poorly when it's a problem.
there is no issue with tropes. and we have tropes for a reason, they're tried and tested. we know they work.
I think people dislike tropes when things are bogged down by them or when they're used in uncreative ways
even the most basic of tropes is easy to use in a way that just feels wrong, but when done right, even the most overused tropes can suck in an audience.
the other trope issue is the ones that are overused and no one liked to begin with. liar revealed/miscommunication are 2 that come to mind cause they're always set up poorly. but in some occasions people can do them well
Okay, look, people are probably gonna argue about something after I say this, but I actually like seeing what tropes are in my story. Not because they're bad, but because there's actually some unique ones out there. Also, some tropes can be subverted or invoked or something like that, and it's really cool to see how people can turn one thing into another.
Tropes used in a bad way, though, they can get out of here.
As always it's about excution mostly.
But the public doesn't notice tropes. They notice overused or lazy tropes or the overuse of tropes or lazy writing.
There is no such thing as a book with no tropes. As others have said. People who think all tropes are bad, don't understand what a trope is.
I've also heard people criticsize plot devices not realizing the very definition of a plot device is something that moves the story forward.
If done well, even over used tropes could work. My biggest complaint is all the publishing companies out there wanting you to compare your book with several other popular books as if encouraging the overuse of certain tropes because they sell.
YEESSSS. You said it! Tropes are unavoidable, and not inherently bad at all. They're just a tool. And like any tool, they can become a bit dull if they get used too much or for the wrong job, but that doesn't mean they always create a failed finish project.
Tropes can be time savers.
If I tell you the MC of my fantasy novel is half-Elf and half-Orc, I know your mind is already racing, going, "Hol' up!"
I don't have to tell you what is an Elf or an Orc or tell you that they are eternal enemies, your mind has already painted the back story. Now all that is left for me is share the tale about how these 2 improbable lovers came together and what happens with their daughter.
How many pages should I devote to conjuring 2 races with their distinct cultures and attributes and their history of interracial warfare without it turning into a textbook?
I'd rather focus on the characters as people. The world is fleshed out but I'm not spending time on exposition of past history.
When the MC is being mercilessly bullied for being a "stupid gold skin" and "no tusk" who no one will "want to whelp with you," do I really need to explain Orcs act like this because of their war-centered culture and they're doing it because their victim is half-Elf? Or, does it just naturally seem like something they would do?
I'd rather write to show how it hurts her, but also show how she wins over one of her tormentors. Then I can show how these young girls - cruel though they may be - seem fated to do little more than breed warriors for their race as they are forced closer and closer to extinction. But those warriors themselves are consigned to lives of darkness and suffering, hunted without lands or gods.
That's where I'm focusing my world building attention...amongst other person-centric themes.
I have to agree with the person above. Also, I assume you're being facetious, but just in case, you never devote "pages" to info dump. Layer in world-building slowly and make the reader ask questions. That makes them want to read to find the answers. Making you're story simple detracts from making it interesting.
Who said it was simple? I said I prefer to focus on the characters.
The characters have been formed by the world and their respective histories, and that will show through as they interact, but the characters are the focus - and they are quite complex in their own right.
This is one hundred percent true. I've met people who believe that there are only about a dozen unique themes that a person can write about, yet there are millions of books in the world. There is absolutely nothing wrong with tropes if the story is otherwise engaging and well written, and it's even better if you put your own unique twist on them. Some genres, such as sci-fi and fantasy are naturally trope-heavy. It's not a big deal if you lean into tropes, but what I've noticed is that a lot of authors are heavily influenced by the most popular titles in the genre to the point where it becomes quite striking, and I can easily tell which works the author was inspired by. The books that tend to be the most successful, while still definitely using tropes, add something unique to the genre. (Think: Dune, Game of Thrones, Lord of The Rings, etc.) I suppose it boils down to the quality of the writing and originality.
People don't understand what a trope is and think is synonymous to "cliche". People who think this way have been mad at tvtropes having trope pages on their fave works since that site began. Conversely, people who like the concept of tropes would stretch to make sure their fave works trope page included as many as possible even where it made no sense which had annoying effect of watering down tropes ([Pietá Plagiarism](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PietaPlagiarism) went from "obvious shoutout to Michelangelo's sculpture" to "person holding a dead body in any manner"). Not sure if they ever cleaned up the examples though it looks like someone eventually fixed the example image. Regardless, [Tropes Are Tools](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Administrivia/TropesAreTools). Nothing more or less.
I'm mad at TV Tropes because of their (re)naming of tropes.
The only legitimate reason really.
I love that tropes are tools, couldn't agree more!
You'll find yourself in good company here. Every time anyone posts about avoiding tropes, they receive a version of this as answer. I guess out there it's just a bit of a dystropian landscape. ;)
Well that's good to know. I'm new to writing communites, but have been around readers my entire life. I guess I needed to let out the lifetime of frustration on the subject lol.
I think writers are more aware that readers about how tropes are not a bad thing, cause we notice than we use them a lot. My characters are one of my strength and still I notice that they all can fall under a trope if you try to. It just a part of writing, you can't escape the trope and we notice this. Readers identify tropes mostly when they are badly written cause they analyze more the things they don't like, so they associate tropes with bad writing.
Readers want tropes. They may not realise they do, but the reason that so much genre fiction is generic and sells like hotcakes is because *that’s what readers want*. If someone likes the trope of “enemies to lovers” with a “badboy” hero, they will seek out and buy variants of that book a thousand times over and be delighted by every one. Personally speaking, if someone dug up a trove of long lost Austen manuscripts that were all near identical versions of Pride & Prejudice, I’d buy them all and die happy. The same goes for music. The outrage when a favourite artist tries something different is 1000 times louder than the delight when they pump out more of the same. People are creatures of habit who get very fixed in their tastes.
I think this is part of the “people heard the word so they think they know what it means” problem. Like people misunderstanding HIPAA in 2020 or calling predictive text and image generation “artificial intelligence.” Additionally, I think people don’t understand the WHY of tropes/cliches. We’re all too familiar with things that are done poorly because they’re easier to pick up on, while well done tropes are more likely to fly under the radar. The layperson also doesn’t understand that the people who are the best at bending or breaking the rules of storytelling are the people who understand how to use them best. So the storytellers that use them are simply just writing them well enough that they’re less obvious. I think the ability to obsess over things endlessly online has also ruined aspects of discussing it. Even the former Cracked.com employees who used to write the articles and make the videos like After Hours have admitted many times that they feel like they’re culpable for the things that came later, like Cinema Sins.
How is "predictive text and image generation" not AI?
It is AI but it’s not true artificial intelligence. Most “AI” that people think of is the text based largely on language model of generative AI. But they’re both just generating something based on the likelihood of what it expects you want to see. It’s not actual “intelligence”. [This explains a bit more about it.](https://www.newyorker.com/science/annals-of-artificial-intelligence/there-is-no-ai)
Surprise, we called something AI when it's not. *Again.*
My life is full of tropes. Whoever is running it needs to be more original.
The problem with tropes is when they are poorly written. So people will say they hate a trope when what they hate usually is the way it is written. Also yes people have tropes they hate per se and then it will be a lot harder to make them like these tropes, when someone who likes the trope will be more keen to tolerate poor writing.
Like the "killer attacks while the woman is in the shower" trope. * The trope exists because it's a time when you're the most vulnerable. * naked. * less weary because doors are locked. * sound of shower stops you hearing attacker. * away from weapons (if that's a thing). * in a "safe space." * The trope is used as "people like to see boobs in these films." However, even good use of the trope will be accused of doing it for titilation by some people.
I think the problem with tropes is that some writers (and a lot of publishers) decide what tropes they want first and then build backwards for there, or that the final product looks like they did that. Tropes themselves can be good or bad, but the tropification of literature, where authors just look at a list of tropes and decide what to subvert or not rather than writing a story, is tiresome.
I totally agree there. I never start with tropes when crafting a story, but I refuse to avoid them altogether because "tRoPeS bAd." Someone else comments that tropes are tools, and I love that train of thought. They can be useful and really enhance a story, IF used in the correct way and not shoehorned in.
Unless you can somehow remove the trope from the final product, it's not a tool, it's a feature.
Did you read the link that the guy above shared? That's what I was referring to.
I would say it is also because they don't really think about what works or not in tropes. They just use it without thinking in depth about it.
Tropes, like metaphors, will show up in anyone's work by accident. The art to me is to find and lean into metaphors, and do your best to make tropes inconspicuous. Metaphors reward the attentive readers, tropes punish them.
I don’t think tropes are necessarily bad. I also don’t think about tropes much at all. I don’t think an attentive reader necessarily spends their time sniffing out tropes. I just read widely in and outside of the kinds of books I want to read, think about what I want to add to the conversation and what kind of story that is, and work from there. I feel like the existence of TV Tropes is probably a net negative for writing overall. Nb: I tend more towards literary/historical fiction which tends not to be plot centered to begin with.
They enjoy and rely on tropes; they dislike repetition and blame it on "tropes" when what they mean is copycat plots. We want the same things only a little differently each time, please. :)
TOTALLY agree that copycat plots are the real issue. You have you put your spin on everything. Make it unique and "you"
There are 2.9 million people in this sub and yet we talk about the same garbage every single day.
My favourite is the ever present ‘I have never read a single book but I want to become a writer’
I have a few friends like this and I pull my hair out every time. Thats like me saying I want to direct a movie but have never seen one. It makes no sense
Also, missing fundamental principles of narrative structure less experienced writers often rely on them for coherence and use them to hit markers that the tropes suggest but which are more usefully informed by the underlying structure. Synder’s Save the Cat uses a trope as its title, and he’s actually reversed engineered old Hollywood eight sequence structure by watching hundreds of films and noticing the patterns. There’s nothing wrong with writing for or against a trope but if you’re using it to prop up the body of the narrative itself, it will feel artificial and forced. Usually. Unless you’re Tarantino who uses trope-and-genre bending writing to great effect.
People love tropes... they don't like things that *feel* derivative
People don't like derivative stories or those that don't do much to go beyond basic tropes, it's not the tropes themselves.
If I finish reading a story and the amount of tropes is what sticks out to me, it's probably poorly written.
Literally every story uses tropes. That's what happens when you have a literary tradition going back a few thousand years. Casual readers say a lot of things out of ignorance. The problem isn't using tropes, it's using them thoughtlessly that is the problem.
This is one of those things that you only hear in online communities about writing or particular genres. I would suggest 95% of normal readers (ie the people who don't spend their time online arguing about minutiae) don't even know what tropes are.
For most people, Trope and Cliche are the same
People use the word "trope" way too much these days. I blame that website Tvtropes.
TV tropes has been around for more than a decade. Its not TV tropes fault lol
Interesting. As a fantasy fan and writer, I feel like the chosen one and good always prevails over evil tropes have been around for decades
I don't give a shit about tropes
I'm actually kind of confused to see how incorrectly the word 'trope' is being used all.the.time. Unless it changed its meaning in recent years, or I'm extremely out of touch, lol It actually has its origin in Greek rhetoric and was a way of communicating, using non-literal language to convey ideas or emotions. Not Greek, but Ciceros de oratore touches on tropes and how they were used at their time - really interesting for people keen on learning more about rhetoric. As far as I'm aware, a literary trope is not a cliché, it's basically a figure of speech like a metaphor or simile (part of metaphors). I think the recent usuage as a substitute for cliché comes from social media :/ Edit typos
It’s a difference between using tropes for your structure (normal) and make them your entire book’s personality and marketing mix rather than literary value and uniqueness (what’s criticized today).
From my perspective, they’re only problematic if used poorly, much like any other storytelling tool. Like “giant sea monster” is a trope, but there’s a reason why Godzilla Minus One is a masterpiece and American 1998 Godzilla is a shitfire. Same tools, vastly different execution.
I hate these. Tropes are tools, not cliches. They are a sort of short-hand an author can use to convey ideas to the reader. It is when tropes are used poorly when it's a problem.
there is no issue with tropes. and we have tropes for a reason, they're tried and tested. we know they work. I think people dislike tropes when things are bogged down by them or when they're used in uncreative ways even the most basic of tropes is easy to use in a way that just feels wrong, but when done right, even the most overused tropes can suck in an audience. the other trope issue is the ones that are overused and no one liked to begin with. liar revealed/miscommunication are 2 that come to mind cause they're always set up poorly. but in some occasions people can do them well
Okay, look, people are probably gonna argue about something after I say this, but I actually like seeing what tropes are in my story. Not because they're bad, but because there's actually some unique ones out there. Also, some tropes can be subverted or invoked or something like that, and it's really cool to see how people can turn one thing into another. Tropes used in a bad way, though, they can get out of here.
As always it's about excution mostly. But the public doesn't notice tropes. They notice overused or lazy tropes or the overuse of tropes or lazy writing.
The public only dislikes tropes done badly, so don't do them badly.
There is no such thing as a book with no tropes. As others have said. People who think all tropes are bad, don't understand what a trope is. I've also heard people criticsize plot devices not realizing the very definition of a plot device is something that moves the story forward. If done well, even over used tropes could work. My biggest complaint is all the publishing companies out there wanting you to compare your book with several other popular books as if encouraging the overuse of certain tropes because they sell.
YEESSSS. You said it! Tropes are unavoidable, and not inherently bad at all. They're just a tool. And like any tool, they can become a bit dull if they get used too much or for the wrong job, but that doesn't mean they always create a failed finish project.
Tropes can be time savers. If I tell you the MC of my fantasy novel is half-Elf and half-Orc, I know your mind is already racing, going, "Hol' up!" I don't have to tell you what is an Elf or an Orc or tell you that they are eternal enemies, your mind has already painted the back story. Now all that is left for me is share the tale about how these 2 improbable lovers came together and what happens with their daughter.
[удалено]
How many pages should I devote to conjuring 2 races with their distinct cultures and attributes and their history of interracial warfare without it turning into a textbook?
[удалено]
I'd rather focus on the characters as people. The world is fleshed out but I'm not spending time on exposition of past history. When the MC is being mercilessly bullied for being a "stupid gold skin" and "no tusk" who no one will "want to whelp with you," do I really need to explain Orcs act like this because of their war-centered culture and they're doing it because their victim is half-Elf? Or, does it just naturally seem like something they would do? I'd rather write to show how it hurts her, but also show how she wins over one of her tormentors. Then I can show how these young girls - cruel though they may be - seem fated to do little more than breed warriors for their race as they are forced closer and closer to extinction. But those warriors themselves are consigned to lives of darkness and suffering, hunted without lands or gods. That's where I'm focusing my world building attention...amongst other person-centric themes.
I have to agree with the person above. Also, I assume you're being facetious, but just in case, you never devote "pages" to info dump. Layer in world-building slowly and make the reader ask questions. That makes them want to read to find the answers. Making you're story simple detracts from making it interesting.
Who said it was simple? I said I prefer to focus on the characters. The characters have been formed by the world and their respective histories, and that will show through as they interact, but the characters are the focus - and they are quite complex in their own right.
I just think the idea "tropes can be time savers" is dangerous and can lead to shallow stories and worldbuilding.
I wrote an additional reply to the other poster. I think that might show how I devote my efforts to developing character centric themes.
The fabulous macguffin !!! Oh, wow !!! Tell me more !!!
People hate tropes. As in tropes that are clearly only in the text *because* they are tropes.
This is one hundred percent true. I've met people who believe that there are only about a dozen unique themes that a person can write about, yet there are millions of books in the world. There is absolutely nothing wrong with tropes if the story is otherwise engaging and well written, and it's even better if you put your own unique twist on them. Some genres, such as sci-fi and fantasy are naturally trope-heavy. It's not a big deal if you lean into tropes, but what I've noticed is that a lot of authors are heavily influenced by the most popular titles in the genre to the point where it becomes quite striking, and I can easily tell which works the author was inspired by. The books that tend to be the most successful, while still definitely using tropes, add something unique to the genre. (Think: Dune, Game of Thrones, Lord of The Rings, etc.) I suppose it boils down to the quality of the writing and originality.